BikeSense

Project

BikeSense

Video Presentation

BikeSense teaser

Summary

Bikesense is an affordable, distributed network of mobile sensors, it combines the power of community sensing with the Barcelona bikesharing service. We have created smart bikes that measure the city's state while riding.

Real time measurements at scaleFor the challenge of making cities smart, it is crucial to have high resolution, up to date data. Although the sensor and computer technology has lowered the price of acquiring data, deploying the sensors and powering them is still expensive and complicated.

Barcelona already has a thriving biking community that transports users around the city. The BikeSense project integrates a sensor system on the bikes, that measures key values of the city's state without the cost of deploying a static sensor network. For the small cost of installing the system on the bikes, the citizens obtain a high resolution map of the city describing its ambiental state, that gets constantly updated.

The deployment on the bikes doesn't require any extra effort by the user, since the data are transmitted via wireless connection once the bike is returned to a station. Since the bike rides are associated to the user, the user can also get a detailed overview of his last ride, average KMs per week, etc. together with the map he helped create. This would also motivate users to explore unmapped areas of the city, making the data even more complete

Everybody benefits!Bike users can analyze their trips and learn more about the environment in the city. Rental companies can get more insights about how their bikes are used and have theft protection system.We make the cities smarter by providing up to date measurements from across the city.